Faculty of Art
December Newsletter: Bad Feelings
During our panel discussion event on November 21, a group of graduate and undergraduate students from last year’s Entrepreneurship Workshop Series cohorts came together to reflect on their experiences—how they came to the workshops, what they learned, and what has happened in the year since. Among the undergraduates, there was the usual youthful sense of […]
November Newsletter: Boss Babes Unite
When I asked a friend recently what came to mind when hearing the word “entrepreneurship,” her exact words in response were: “A dudebro. At a Ted Talk. Saying insufferable BS”, a Six(ish)-Word Poem. Truly, what does entrepreneurship even mean outside of this image it invariably summons (something, something, signified, signifier)? This image and the ethos […]
October Newsletter: Playing Pretend (Dream Job Extension Pack)
I find myself struggling to use my imagination these days. As a Master’s student, whether it is having not read anything for fun in years, or hitting a stalemate with my thesis, or being stuck in the worst timeline ever of polycrisis and hellfire—it is difficult to imagine what the next month will look like, […]
Interview with Fall 2023 CCP: Olivia Brophy and Athena Loredo
As part of our Fall 2023 cohort, we interviewed Athena Loredo (DMA candidate, Composition) and Olivia Brophy (MA Student, Medical Anthropology), for their collaborative cohort project with Dr. Letitia Henville’s academic editing business, Writing Short is Hard. In this project, they conducted research and interviews with SSHRC merit review committee members to produce a series of […]
March Newsletter: Using grants to plan your next steps
I was chatting with a friend in a PhD program about encouraging more graduate students to apply for non-research grants. She had a couple successful ones under her belt, all won while completing her degree, so she understood the particular challenges students face when breaking into the world of non-research grants while also navigating their […]
February Newsletter: What does “networking” mean to you?
If you type “how to network” into a search engine, you’ll find hundreds of articles (if not thousands—we haven’t looked through them all, admittedly) offering exclusive tips on saying the right things to the right people to make the right career move. Networking, these articles tell us, is a problem that has been solved, a […]
January Newsletter: Collaboration and Networking for Career Diversity
If once seen as side of desk, collaborative work is urging its way into the core of Arts and Humanities. In an interview for the Humanities Without Walls podcast, two recently graduated PhDs discussed how pursuing collaborative and interdisciplinary opportunities changed their career pathways (you can listen to the episode or read the transcript). It’s […]
Interview with Diana Kamau, Women Transforming Cities
Summer 2023 Collaborative Cohort Project The Arts Amplifier initiative offers Arts graduate students and postdoctoral fellows the unique opportunity to transform ideas into unique and meaningful work experiences. In Summer 2023, Arts Amplifier hosted its second Collaborative Cohort Project (CCP) with the grassroots organization Women Transforming Cities. We reached out to Community Organizer Diana Kamau to […]
In Case You Missed It: Entrepreneurship and Arts Graduate Students
From our November 2023 newsletter On October 24, Arts Amplifier asked a panel of four Vancouver-based entrepreneurs with UBC Arts graduate degrees whether they considered themselves entrepreneurs. They answered “no.” Over the course of the hour, panelists deconstructed the word “entrepreneur” and its freighted associations with capitalist systems, colonialism, and old narratives of the lone […]
October Newsletter: Entrepreneurship and the Arts Graduate Degree
In a 2021 report, researchers found that only 6% of people with PhDs are self-employed—as compared with 10% nationwide. In her article “The PhD Entrepreneur,” Letitia Henville notes that PhDs tend to choose university jobs at 12 times the rate as self-employment, even when academic jobs consistently decline in availability and security. The reasons might […]